Avarice
by Haberdashing
Summary: AU based off the Transcendence AU where Grunkle Stan becomes a demon instead of Dipper.
1. Prologue

Everything was coming up Pines.

Bill Cipher had put up one hell of a fight, but after all was said and done, he had lost the battle. The rift used to connect the physical world to the mindscape had evaporated into nothingness, the two realms separated once more. The dream demon himself looked smaller, the yellow that filled his form now faded, no longer entirely opaque as he struggled to remain corporeal.

"This isn't over." Bill's voice was soft, a mere shadow of its usual self.

"You're not fooling anyone, Bill." Dipper took a step towards the demon, who eyed him warily. "We beat you fair and square."

Despite everything- the chaos that pervaded the family's surroundings, the strain of the battle that they had just fought, the niggling feeling that as long as Bill was still around they weren't out of the woods just yet- Stanley Pines couldn't help but smile to see the boy stand up for himself, and against a demon no less.

"Fightin' back," he whispered to himself, the sound lost amidst the hisses and crackles of broken machinery and dying magic.

"I don't think so." Bill replied. "You Pines are going to pay for what you've done, starting with…"

A moment passed, a tense, silent moment in which each member of the Pines family sized up the threat in front of them.

"Eenie…" One finger uncurled from the demon's fist to point at Mabel, her bright sweater a beacon of light and color amidst the darkness.

"Meenie…" Another finger pointed at Ford, whose face paled ever so slightly, his hands clenched in tight fists.

"Miney…" A third pointed at Dipper, whose thin arms trembled, though there was fire in his eyes as he stared back at the demon.

Stanley gulped as he realized that Bill had only one finger left, leaving only one option for the first target of his vengeance.

Bill extended the fourth and final finger.

"Y҉óu̷.̧"

In the blink of an eye, the world turned gray, and his family disappeared. It was just just the two of them now.

Bill was a vibrant yellow once again, brighter than he had been since the rift between dimensions had been sealed, the lone source of color remaining in a world gone monochrome.

"Welcome to the mindscape- also known as the Pines family vacation home!"

Stan paused, trying to put together the logic behind the demon's statement, but the pieces didn't all fit together, and those that did painted a picture that he'd rather not dwell on.

"…I'm not even gonna ask."

"Don't sweat it, Fez. Just stay tight and ŕela̶x͘."

And suddenly, Bill _pulled_.

But it was a strange kind of pull, one tugging not at his body but at his mind, his soul, his very being. Stan felt an overwhelming urge to give in, to let the demon have his way, to close his eyes and go to sleep and not have to think about when, or if, he would wake up…

No. He couldn't. He wouldn't. Stan didn't know what Bill was planning this time, but he knew that whatever it was, it was _wrong_. And he was damned if he was going to let Bill win.

Stan stood tall and summoned all of his willpower into focusing on pushing Bill out of his mind, pushing back on the mental force that threatened to overwhelm him.

Bill shivered for a brief moment before starting his assault anew. At first, Stan enjoyed watching Bill's reaction, watching him clench his fists, the anger and hatred contained within his one-eyed gaze- but it proved to be a distraction, and he closed his eyes so as to focus better.

Minutes passed. Maybe hours. There was no way of tracking the time here, no clocks, no sun, no sound, just mind against mind, demon against human.

"Stanley?"

That wasn't Bill's voice. It was one he knew far better, one he had grown up with, one that had been missing from his life for far too long.

Stanley opened his eyes.

"Ford?"

Ford nodded somberly, shooting his brother a wry grin.

Bill, Stan noted, was nowhere to be seen. Not gone- he could still feel the weight of his presence in his mind- but out of the picture for the time being, at least. They were alone for now. Just two brothers against the world, just like the old days.

"I'm so glad I found you. I followed Bill in here, and I think I know a way to get you out."

The pressure that had been building in his head reached a crescendo, and he had to keep repeating Ford's words to himself to stay focused on the conversation at hand. _A way out. He knows a way out._

"You do?"

Ford nodded, pushing up his glasses with his index finger. "My research indicates that if you go to sleep in the dreamscape, you'll wake up in the real world, and then this whole thing will be done with. No more worrying about Bill."

Stan could hear the blood rushing through his head, could feel his heart pounding in his chest. His eyelids felt heavy, drooping on their own when his attention flitted elsewhere. His body and mind both cried out for rest. If that was all it took… if all he had to do to get away was close his eyes and drift away…

"That's it. Just go to sleep…"

Somewhere deep down, in some dark corner that hadn't been overcome with pain and fog, a warning bell went off in Stan's mind.

"No."

Ford took a step back, wide eyes staring into the gray abyss around them, refusing to look at his brother.

"No? What do you mean, _no_? Don't you want to stop Bill?"

There was something ever so slightly off about his smile, about his speech, even about the way he pushed up his glasses…

Stanley took a breath and looked up and down at Ford.

"Come on. We can do this. _You_ can do this."

Their eyes met, and Ford extended his hands, six fingers reaching for five-

And Stanley punched him in the face.

Ford's glasses fell to the floor, frames scratched and lenses cracked but otherwise more or less intact. He took a step back, hands raised with palms open.

"What was that about?"

"Give it up, Bill. I know you're not my brother. You can drop the act any time."

A minute passed. Stanley focused on steadying his breaths, watching his chest rhythmically rise and fall- which, he noted, didn't seem to be necessary for Ford… no. That wasn't Ford. He knew his brother better than that.

Was Ford's lack of breath a failing in the imitation, or did he not need to breathe in this strange, otherworldly realm, either?

Stan wasn't keen on finding out the hard way.

The form of his brother became twisted, shrunken, appearing as a monstrous caricature of itself for a brief moment before dissolving entirely, replaced by Bill in the shape of a triangle once more.

"What gave it away?"

Stan glared, pointing his finger directly at the demon's lone eye.

"You think Ford would just smile and say it'll all be okay? You think he would throw his hands up and back away from a fight? You know _nothing_ about my brother!"

"I know more than you do about him, Fez. S͞o̶ m͟uch mo͝r͟e." As Bill spoke the last three words, his body displayed a series of images, flashing through them just slowly enough for each one to be individually discernible. All images of Ford. Ford in college, Ford wandering the woods of Gravity Falls, Ford in some dimly-lit cavern that Stanley couldn't recognize.

All times that he hadn't been there for Ford.

Stanley felt dazed, unfocused, and he wasn't sure whether that was because of Bill's mental warfare or just the natural result of coming to terms with the images before him.

"And that's exactly why I'm not giving up, after all the work I've done to get my brother back-"

"And why did you bother? Don't tell me it's because you _care_ about him- oh, you're hilarious. You did it out of guilt, because you knew that everything bad that had ever happened to him, everything that had torn the two of you apart, was _your fault_."

A piercing pain shot through Stan's head, making him flinch despite his best efforts to stay still. He could feel Bill pressing in on him, ready to crush him at the first sign of weakness, and it made him queasy and shaky-

"And what did you get out of that meager attempt at making amends? A brother that still hates your guts? Another addition to your lengthy list of screw-ups? Face it, old-timer. Soon enough you'll have no house, no job, no name, no identity to call your own… The world already thinks Stanley Pines is dead. You might as well make it off̷ici͡al͝."

"So you want me to, what, give up and let you destroy the world?"

"Come on, I'm not gonna destroy this place, just liven it up a little! Your sorry excuse for a family will probably be _glad_ to have more weirdness to explore."

Bill drew closer until he was just out of arm's reach, then extended his arm, thin and dark and filling with blue fire.

"So do the first worthwhile thing in your life and _let me in_."

Stanley's mind flashed back to when he'd heard that phrase before, when Ford had said it in the argument thirty years ago that had changed his life forever.

"… _I'm giving you a chance to do the first worthwhile thing in your life…"_

But Ford had been arguing to hide the journals, bury the dangerous knowledge that they contained in the far corners of the earth, to make sure nobody could use them for their own malevolent ends.

Most of all, Stan realized, Ford wanted to keep them away from the demon whose large, single eye was fixed on him now.

Stan slumped his shoulders and gave the demon a tight nod, moving his hand cautiously forward.

"Alright." he muttered. "For once, I'll do something worthwhile."

Bill inched closer until their fingertips were nearly touching, waiting on Stan to make contact and confirm their agreement. "Glad to hear someone around here has finally wised up."

And, in the blink of an eye, Stanley leaped forward and tackled Bill. His fingers slid between the bricks that lined the demon's body and clutched Bill's eye tightly in his left fist as his right hand reached out to tear Bill apart piece by piece. At the same time, his mind reached out to the spot where he had felt Bill's presence most strongly and focused on that, no longer worried about protecting himself but on destroying Bill in the very way that the demon had aimed to destroy him.

So Bill wanted a piece of him, eh? Well, the feeling was mutual.

The hand gripping Bill's eye soon ached with the sensation of pins and needles, a sensation that crawled up his body as his grip held tight. The demon squirmed, but seemed unable to move away from his trapped eye, and soon enough he was falling apart, clean lines widening into cracks that permeated his entire being, bits of his body sloughing off and sinking into the gray ground below.

"Ending you," Stanley growled, "is the most worthwhile thing I could ever do."

"Nǫ ̸ǹo͘ no…́"

And suddenly the pins and needles feeling was replaced with burning, blue flames licking his hand and engulfing his arm as the remaining portion of Bill's form went from a dull yellow to blood red. His mind was nearly consumed with pain and fog and confusion, but Stan repeated one mantra to himself, one direction that he would follow at all costs.

 _Hold on._

His vision grew dim and fuzzy, and white spots flickered in and out of his line of vision haphazardly. There was a ringing in his ears, a chime which kept growing higher- and higher-pitched and louder and louder until it was near-deafening. His whole body was aflame now, the individual wounds becoming a single, overarching sensation of pain. And he could still feel the weight and the pressure of Bill's eye against his hand as he held it all the more tightly.

 _Hold on._

His vision splintered into shards of color that in no way resembled the scene that had been before him only seconds earlier, many of the fragments filled with colors that he could not name, could not even recognize. The ringing was overtaken by a harsh screeching, a scream that was not quite human or animal in sound but something else entirely, the source of which he could not identify. Stan felt his body being pushed and pulled and torn by some indiscernible force- Bill's doing, it had to be, though he couldn't feel Bill's presence in his mind or in his hand anymore, couldn't feel anything but the burning and the tearing.

 _Hold on._

His field of vision shrank until it was the size of a peephole, and the shards of color flickered rapidly between hues, as if looking through a kaleidoscope. The shrieks and the ringing grew dimmer, replaced by something resembling radio static, the kind of sound you get when you mix up the numbers and try to tune into a station that doesn't exist. And he was still burning, every part of him was still burning, always burning.

 _Hold_ -

Stan finally lost his struggle to remain conscious, and the world went dark and silent.


	2. Chapter 1

Stan didn't know what to expect when (if) he woke up. This had been one hell of a night, and given all the tough nights he'd had over the years, that was saying something. At this point, all he knew for sure was that he needed to expect the unexpected.

But as he returned to consciousness, the world seemed… surprisingly normal. Calm, even. He couldn't feel anything anymore, not even his usual aches and pains. His vision had returned to some semblance of normalcy, though it was still vaguely wonky in some way Stan couldn't quite put his finger on. And from what he could see of his surroundings, he was no longer in that freaky monochrome mess from his fight with Bill, but in the basement of the Shack, where it had all started. The walls were a little dirty, sure, but they weren't falling down or fading away or changing colors or anything. Same old, same old.

When Stan glanced to his side and spotted what remained of his brother's lab equipment, the lab was farther away than it had been before- no, not farther away, _lower,_ closer to the ground… well, it wasn't the first time this place had been hit by gravity weirdness, and come to think of it, he couldn't even feel his feet against the ground, so…

He looked straight down, past his feet to the ground below. It did look to be a ways below him, several feet down if he had to guess- so he _was_ floating. But that wasn't so weird. Must be some after-effect of the rift closing, the kind of thing that Ford could probably yammer on about for hours.

The weird part was that, sprawled out upon that distant ground, there was something that looked an awful lot like Stan himself.

Stan floated down- he wasn't sure how he did that, exactly, except that it'd come naturally when he'd thought to do it- to examine this other self. It didn't just look a tad bit like him, it was damn near identical to him; he might as well have been looking in a mirror. Same big nose, same bushy eyebrows… same _everything_. The double's brown eyes showed no signs of Bill's influence, either, though they were glazed over and lifeless, and the glasses that should have stood between them and the rest of the world lay on the ground, shattered into tiny shards.

Was that… was _he_ …?

His half-formed speculations were disrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps.

He looked up, and even before he could make out the face and limbs of the one who was approaching, the sheer _color_ that stood out from the dark basement walls was enough to make it obvious who was coming his way.

"Mabel!"

"Grunkle Stan?" Her voice was too soft for one always loud, too somber for one always cheerful. The sheer incongruity of it started Stan's contemplation anew. It wasn't _that_ bad, was it? Whatever was going on- whatever had led to him floating mid-air above a creepy doppelganger of himself- it couldn't be worse than what they'd just gone through. If they had proven anything that night, it was that by working together, them Pines could make it through anything, even the goddamn end of the world.

"Good to see you, sweetie! Now, what's wrong? Someone get hurt?"

As Mabel's walk slowed, Stan slowly drew closer to her, unsure of what to say, what to do, what action he could take that could fix the hurt in his niece's eyes. She didn't respond to his questions, just stared at the floor and trudged ahead step by step. Whatever had made her look so downcast must be something big, much bigger than the peripheral strangeness that he was dealing with.

Had- had Ford… had Dipper…?

"Talk to me, will ya? You're acting like _you're_ the one with the hearing aid!" He let out a bark of a laugh that was hollow and gruff and would fool absolutely no one, least of all himself.

Mabel walked up to him, and he reached out his arm to rest his hand on her shoulder, in the hopes of that gesture of connection helping to ground her- to ground both of them, really.

But his hand passed right through her, and all that Stan felt when it happened was a slight tingle, a shiver of the spine that had nothing to do with the temperature- _someone stepping on your grave_ , Ma had always called it. And she just kept going until she stood next to the other him, the doppelganger… the body.

Because that was what it was, wasn't it? It was a body- _his_ body- that was sprawled out on the floor there. No use in denying it now. The signs all added up, and in hindsight it made perfect sense- how foolish was he to think that he'd made it out of that battle with Bill okay, made it out _alive_ … And he'd heard the kids say something or other about ghosts haunting the town before; Stan had just never thought he would be one of them.

Mabel crouched down, leaning over his face- or, not his face _now_ , but what… _had_ been his face? all this was going to make his head hurt- before bellowing out, "GUYS, SOMETHING'S WRONG WITH STAN!"

 _Guys_. Stan's mind clung to the word. _Guys_ meant she was talking to both Ford and Dipper, rather than only one of the two. That meant they were both okay, both in good enough shape to come over, right? It was just him, then, only him fallen while all the others were unscathed.

Maybe that was for the best. Better him than anyone else.

Sneakers squeaked against stone as Dipper rushed to join his sister at Stan's side.

"Dipper! Over here, kid!"

Dipper crouched down next to Stan's body and rested his hand on Stan's wrist, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath as Mabel watched her great-uncle's face for any movement. The two whispered a few words to one another, and though Stan didn't get too close, he could overhear enough to understand the gist of the conversation. _Not breathing- no pulse- can't be- how- no- why?_

Stan stood in Dipper's line of sight, waving his hands around and making exaggerated silly faces, then sighed, his shoulders slumping as he got no response from the boy. "Oh for two, then. Doesn't that just figure."

Finally, as the children gave up their efforts and just stared blankly at Stan's body, their eyes filling with tears, Ford appeared on the scene. When Dipper and Mabel noticed his arrival, their words filled the void that had threatened to engulf them, the two spitting out half-formed explanations about what had befallen Stanley.

"Grunkle Ford, I don't know what happened-"

"Bill must have done something, but I don't understand-"

"I got here and he was just like this-"

"And he didn't respond to anything, and he's not breathing or moving or-"

"I don't know if I could have done anything-"

"I'm so sorry, Great-uncle Ford, I wish-"

Ford took a step forward, holding his palms out to quiet the twins' frantic speech. "Just calm down, children. Calm down."

Stanley took the momentary pause in the conversation as his opportunity to speak up once more. The kids couldn't see him, but maybe Ford could, maybe he was different- maybe because they were twins, or because of his time spent in other dimensions, or… or… It was worth a shot, anyway. It was all he had left to hope for at this point.

"Hey, poindexter. C'mon. Don't tell me you can't see me."

…and, miracle of miracles, Ford looked his way. His eyes widened as the two made eye contact, though Stanley couldn't quite make out his brother's expression.

"Oh, thank God, Ford, I-"

"Whatcha looking at?" Mabel, evidently having noticed Ford's errant gaze, was now looking in Stan's general direction, holding one hand above her eyes and squinting to see if she could spot anything out of the ordinary.

"You…?" Ford looked back down at the kids, whose gaze had settled somewhere around Stan's floating feet.

Stanley shook his head sadly. "They can't see me. Just you and me, I guess. Like old times."

Ford looked back at Mabel and Dipper and placed a hand on each twin's shoulder, clearing his throat before addressing them again. "Never mind that. Kids, I know this has to be hard on you, and we'll talk later. But right now, I want you two to go upstairs, see if my hou- if the Shack is still intact, and wait for me up there." He dropped his hands back to his side and sighed, staring back at Stan's body before adding, "Your uncle Ford needs some time alone."

The children hesitated for a moment, then nodded in unison, their eyes still damp as they headed to the elevator.

"You're not alone." Stanley muttered. "You know that, right?"

"I know." The response was curt, flat, the sort of tone used to end a conversation rather than to start one.

"Ford, I think we need to talk about…" Stan pointed at his body on the ground, then at himself, before ending the gesture with a vague wiggling of the hand. "…this."

"Yes." There was an edge to Ford's voice, one Stanley had never had directed his way before, not even when he'd reactivated the portal and risked the world's destruction in the process. This was different, not fiery anger but a cold, alien disdain bordering on downright loathing, and while Stan was acutely aware of his litany of failures, none of them seemed capable of prompting such hatred. "Yes, we do need to talk."


	3. Chapter 2

Though he was well aware of his brother's apparent hostility, Stanley still didn't hesitate to speak his mind.

"So, what's the deal with all this, Sixer?"

The instant he said Ford's childhood nickname- one used affectionately when they'd grown up together, one that he had thought would put his brother at ease- Stanley saw Ford's shoulders tense up, and his eyes remained as cold and dark as ever.

Ford pointed a finger up at Stan, who was floating a few inches above the ground, the unnatural gap masking how the two should have stood at equal height. "Why are you here?"

Stan shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine- I don't really get it, not that I'm _complaining_ about sticking around of course-"

"Don't play games with me. Why. Are. You. _Here_?" Ford punctuated the final word by poking him in the chest. It tickled a little, Ford's finger brushing against his suit, and even though the gesture was not meant as a reassuring one, Stan still found comfort in that fleeting moment of physical contact, in the knowledge that his brother could still touch him.

Stan crossed his arms, pulling them tightly into his chest. "I think you mean 'Good to see you, Stanley. Thanks for saving the world, Stanley. You're a real pal, Stanley.'"

"Stop _saying_ that!"

"Saying what? Saying that I could use a little appreciation right about now? Saying that maybe, just maybe, you could consider thanking me for saving the world, saving _you_?"

"No, not- are you seriously claiming that you _helped_ me?"

Stan rolled his eyes, careful to not meet his brother's pointed gaze. "Oh boy, not this again. Look, I get it, ya still hate my guts. But I think we've got bigger problems right about now."

"Fine. _Fine_." Ford flung his hands into the air. "What do _you_ want to talk about, then?"

"Gee, I dunno, how about-" Stanley pointed down at the body- his body- sprawled out on the floor between them. "-what the hell this is all about? You're the one who knows all about these messed-up creatures, if there's anybody here who knows ghost stuff I-"

" _Ghost stuff_? You're not a ghost, I know that much!"

Stan sighed, rubbing one hand against his temple. "Finally we're getting somewhere. So if I'm not a ghost, then what _am_ I?"

"You're a monster." Ford spat the last word out, and it echoed through the basement cavern, then through Stanley's mind as the outside world quieted. Stan's face fell as he scrambled to think of a rebuttal, but Ford spoke up as Stan's mind was still drawing a blank. "And I don't know why you're pretending otherwise."

"Stanford, I…"

Ford turned away from his brother and clasped his hands behind his back, gazing at what remained of the portal, where scattered pieces of debris still smoked and hissed. "I suppose it was foolish of me to think this would end any other way. But why are you still following me around? The portal's gone, your precious rift is gone, and if you think _I'm_ going to be the one to change that-"

"Why would I want that? The only reason I used the damn thing is to get you back- and a lot of good _that_ did me…"

"Like hell you cared about getting me back!" Ford faced Stan again and took a large step forward, pointing up at Stan's face. "I was only ever a- a pawn to you, I know that now. Just part of your mad scheme for power. But it's over with, you hear me? You lost! We're done!"

"What the hell are you-"

And then, all at once, the real meaning of Ford's words came rushing at him.

"You think I'm _Bill_?"

Ford sighed, and his stare seemed to go right past Stan's face to the wall beyond, his unfocused gaze looking not at him but almost through him. "Don't play dumb with me, Bill. I'm not an _idiot_."

"Ford, that's- that's ridiculous!"

"Your impression's not bad, I'll give you that… but you never can get the eyes right, can you? Fool me once, shame on you…" Ford shook his head slowly, the rest of the idiom unstated but its meaning all too clear.

"The hell do you mean I 'didn't get the eyes right'? Something's up with my eyes?"

Ford dug around in the pockets of his coat for several seconds before finally retrieving a worn, grimy hand mirror and wordlessly holding it up in front of Stan's face.

The mirror was covered in a thin layer of dust and filth, so what Stan could see of himself was blurred and muddled, but the details mattered less to him than the big picture. From what he could make out, he looked like himself, solid as ever rather than the see-through he'd half-imagined, the spitting image of the body below. But his eyes… his eyes were black where they should be white, gold where they should be dark.

Stan winked at his reflection, and it winked back. The image in there was him, alright, and the eyes…

Well, Ford was right about one thing, anyway. Something was definitely up with his eyes.

Because obviously this whole situation hadn't been strange enough before.

"Okay, that's… that's weird, I'll give you that, but there must be some logical explanation-"

"I _know_ the logical explanation!" Ford took a deep breath, and when he continued speaking, his voice was softer, with the slightest hint of a tremor sneaking through. "So just… give up this facade already. Because I know better than to think you're really my brother. My brother…" Ford pointed to Stanley's body, still splayed out lifeless on the ground, at the glossy white eyes pointed towards the ceiling. "…is… there. Not…" He waved his hand in the floating Stan's general direction. "Not here. Not _you_."

Stan shrugged. "Listen, I dunno what to tell ya, but… I'll prove myself to you, I swear. I'll do anything. There has to be something I can do, right?"

Ford's silence was enough of a response.

"Hey, what about… uh… that day when we were eight and you learned the word 'polydactyl', and I thought it sounded like pterodactyl, and for the rest of the day whenever you started talking I'd make a pterodactyl screech!" Stanley gave his brother a triumphant grin. "Would Bill know about _that_?"

" _Yes_." Ford shot back.

Stan's grin faded, his expression growing somber once more.

"Well, then, uh-"

"You really want to prove that you mean well?" Before Stanley could reply, could so much as nod to show his assent, Ford kept speaking. "Then _leave_. Leave me alone, leave my _house_ alone, leave my _family_ alone, and go terrorize someone else for a change. You've done enough damage already."

"…I can't do that, Stanford. You know I can't."

"Well, then it seems we're at an impasse. But if I were you, I'd go somewhere else, find a different set of pawns to play with, because there's nothing left for you here."

And Stanley Pines, expert con artist, master manipulator, whose livelihood depended on always knowing the right thing to say, was left at a loss for words.

Ford broke his gaze, turned away, and walked briskly towards the elevator. As he walked, he muttered one last retort under his breath, just loud enough for Stan to hear.

"We may have lost one Pines to you, but I'll be damned if I let you take another."

As Ford entered the elevator, he looked back once more, his gaze meandering between Stan, Stan's body, and the remnants of the portal for a good long moment before a shaking finger pressed the button to go up.

Then the door closed, the elevator hummed and shot upwards, and Stanley was all alone.


	4. Chapter 3

After a minute of thought, Stan realized that he could follow Ford by flying through the ceiling, his body passing through the wood and stone as easily as through thin air.

A quick glance around the gift shop revealed that the place wasn't _too_ bad off, given what it'd just been through. Sure, most of the knick-knacks that he always tried to pawn off on tourists had fallen to the ground during the mayhem (half of them breaking in the process), but all things considered, the damage could have been a lot worse. A bit of debris here and there was the least of his problems right now; once they got the rest of this mess sorted out, cleaning up the Shack would be a cinch.

He followed the sound of Ford's voice into the kitchen, where his brother stood among fallen knives and broken jars, the kids standing side by side near a scuffed but otherwise undamaged wall. Stan hovered in the doorway as he caught the tail end of Ford's speech.

"-something to tell you children."

"Is it about Grunkle Stan?" Mabel looked up at her great-uncle as she spoke,her eyes wide and dark, their depths tinged with despair and curiosity and the slightest spark of hope.

"No... well, yes, but there's more to it than that." Ford took a deep breath, shuddering slightly before continuing. "Bill is still here."

"What?" Dipper began speaking just as Ford finished saying his last word, leaving no pause between the two. "How do you know? W-what has he done? What can we _do_? Should we-"

"Dipper." Mabel's voice was soft but firm as she flopped her arm onto her brother's shoulder. "Don't flip out on us, bro-bro. Just _breathe_ a little."

"...listen to your sister." Ford didn't make eye contact with either of the twins, instead resolutely staring at some point above their heads. "Things may seem bleak, but the first step to defeating Bill is to _stay calm_. Because if you give in to your emotions, you won't be able to think clearly, and that's what Bill's counting on."

Ford's arms dangled just behind his legs, so the kids couldn't see that his hands were balled into tight fists, dirty and ragged fingernails digging into the palms of his hands.

Dipper's shoulders slumped as he took a long, deep breath, his gaze moving between Ford's face and Mabel's half-hearted smile that disappeared whenever her brother's eyes wandered elsewhere. "But- but he-"

"No buts. What we need to do is focus on putting together a plan to take down Bill for good."

"What you _need to do_ is stop dancing around the elephant in the room."

Ford turned his head as he finally registered Stan's presence, and as Stan floated into the room, he returned Ford's frosty glare with a frustrated stare of his own.

"What do you want from me?" Ford threw his hands in the air, indents from his fingernails still visibly cutting into his palms. "Why won't you just _leave me alone_?"

Dipper and Mabel's eyes started to water, and Mabel tightened her grip on her brother's shoulders, the one-armed hug growing closer to a choke-hold as they both edged back towards the wall.

"G-grunkle Ford, what did we do wrong?"

Ford sighed and rested one hand against his temple. "No no no, not you kids- you can't hear him, that's right, you wouldn't know-"

"Hear who?"

"...Bill."

"You mean Bill is _here_?" The boy's warbling voice cracked in the middle of the sentence, and Stan was suddenly, violently reminded that those two were just children- they were _twelve_ for God's sake, kids their age shouldn't have to deal with the end of the goddamn _world_ , they shouldn't have been involved in any of this, this never should have been their battle to fight...

"No he's not, you dense m-" Stan looked over to the kids- Dipper was digging around in the pockets of his vest for god-knows-what, while Mabel's eyes were darting back and forth as if she could see what Ford saw if she just tried hard enough- and paused, considering his choice of words anew. Then he looked back at Ford, remembered that the latter was the only one who could hear him anyway, and spat out the obscenity he had in mind, though his hesitation softened the word's force.

Ford cleared his throat and pushed his glasses up before speaking up again. "I believe he's been here this whole time. Whatever... happened... between Bill and Stan must not have been enough to get rid of him. We need to make a plan to ensure that we can finish the job."

"Right, because your _last_ plan worked out just great. Not like I gave a shit about that whole 'staying alive' thing anyway, huh? And you don't seem too concerned either... though I suppose that's not much of a surprise."

Dipper gently pushed his sister's arm off of his neck and back onto his shoulder. "But the rift was sealed, right? So what could he be after now? Or..."

"I'm not sure yet, but our first step should be finding out exactly what he has planned."

"Aaaand you're ignoring me." Stan folded his arms against his chest. "Real mature of you there, Sixer."

"I am _not_ going to discuss this with _you_." Ford hissed, turning his back to the children as he faced Stan once more.

"What's he saying?"

Ford glanced back before sighing and shaking his head. "Nothing you children need to concern yourselves with."

"Just talk to them, will ya? I'll go in the other room if it'll make you feel better, sheesh. But if you want people to give you a hand, you should probably actually explain things to them first. Maybe then we wouldn't be in this mess."

"That's funny, coming from you. Talk all you want, but you're not going to get anything out of me. I've learned my lesson about that one."

"Dammit, Ford, for once in your life would you just _lis̵t̶e͘n͘ to me͡-_ "

Stan's statement was punctuated with a loud _crash!_

Four pairs of eyes quickly pinpointed the source of the noise, one of the few shelves that had remained standing in the kitchen. The shelf itself still stood perpendicular against the wall, as straight and sturdy as ever (which, truth be told, wasn't saying much), but its contents had shifted though the shelf itself had remained still. On what had been a mostly-clean section of the tile floor, there was now scattered a number of glass shards and grains of salt, the remains of a salt shaker that Stan dimly remembered having nicked- er, "borrowed"- from a diner near the state border a few decades back.

After looking around the room to make sure that nothing else had fallen and nobody was hurt, the members of the Pines family breathed a collective sigh.

"We'll have to clean that up too now, I suppose." Ford said, shaking his head.

"What _was_ that?"

"An earthquake, maybe?"

"Or an aftershock?"

"Did _Bill_ do that?"

Ford glanced over at Stan at the mention of Bill's name before shifting his gaze back towards the kids. "Perhaps. It's hard to say for sure."

"Really? What makes you think this was _me_?" Stan threw his hands in the air. "Look, if you keep acting all crazy like this, nothing good's gonna come of it."

"I am _not_ acting crazy." Ford hissed. "And I'm not going to let you-"

His sentence was interrupted by the sound of a ringing phone.

After a second of hesitation, Ford muttered "I can get it," as he walked over to the phone's receiver; upon reaching the phone, he forcefully yanked the receiver off of the handset and shoved it against his ear.

"Hello?"

Stan slowly floated closer to his brother in an attempt to hear the other end of the conversation, but the voice coming from the receiver was too soft and muffled for him to make out.

"Yes, this is Stanford."

Stan couldn't help but snort upon hearing that. Because it was true, it _was_ Stanford, after thirty long years it was the real Stanford Pines on the line, but he'd bet everything he owned and a lot that he didn't that Ford wasn't the one who the person on the other end of the line had in mind.

Ford shot an icy glare at Stan, then turned to the kids and mouthed _It's your father_ before returning to the phone call.

"I know, I-" Ford coughed twice, and when he spoke up again his voice sounded different, his tone slightly rougher. "I've got a bit of a cold, that's all. Nothing to worry about. So, why are you calling?"

The silence dragged on as the caller spoke- thirty seconds went by, then a minute, then two. And when the other end of the line fell silent for a brief moment, all Ford got out before the caller continued speaking was "Oh my."

Another long minute went by before a pause in which Ford could get out more than two words.

"Actually, things have been pretty normal around here..."

The children shared a long, uncertain glance before simultaneously shrugging, while Stan let out a snort even louder than the last.

"All things considered, anyway, nothing like what you mentioned. Though, you know, Gravity Falls always has been a bit... different." He hesitated for a moment before adding, "That's why I came here in the first place, you know."

More jumbled words came from the other end of the line.

"Not much, no, though we've been inside all day. So there's no need to rush out here. I'm fine, the kids are fine- we're all fine, I swear."

Only a few seconds passed before Ford spoke up again. "Of course."

He lowered the receiver and turned back to the kids, his voice back to normal. "Your father would like to speak with you."

Mabel was the first to rush to Ford's side and yank the receiver from Ford's hand. "Dad?"

Dipper scowled as he reached the spot a split second after his sister.

Ford cleared his breath and mumbled, "I'll give you kids some privacy while you're on the phone," before shuffling out of the room.

"Well, a _lot_ has happened since-"

Stan silently followed Ford out of the kitchen, ignoring Mabel's rapid speech and Dipper's requests for her to let him talk. Ford walked into the living room, each footstep small and careful as he circumvented the fallen and broken objects that littered the ground, and collapsed into the armchair. He took a deep sigh and cradled his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking.

And as Stan inched closer, the children's speech growing quieter until it became mere background noise, he could hear his brother's quick breaths turn to sobs and see tears stream through the cracks between his fingers.


	5. Chapter 4

It seemed that it was going to be a long night.

It already had been before Bill had... before Bill, truth be told. The first working clock Stan had floated past kindly informed him that it was just shy of midnight, though a sliver of sunlight had still been peeking out from the horizon when he'd been outside just before everything had gone to hell. Probably wasn't a bad thing that Ford had marched the kids up to bed after they'd finished their phone call- it'd been a long day for them, far too long, and they were still growing, still so young, the last thing they needed was to spend more time panicking while half-asleep and worrying themselves sick in the process...

The night probably would have seemed a lot shorter if Ford had been willing to just talk to him, but that was beginning to seem like a lost cause. Ford had retreated to his study in the basement and encased himself in messy mounds of paper trying to research... well, he didn't say, but Stan had a feeling that he could guess the subject, at least in broad strokes. Not that he'd find out first-hand, because every time he approached Ford hastily shoved whatever notes he was currently perusing into the nearest stack, gave him a frosty glare, and started chucking pens at him. Most of the pens flew way off the mark, and even the handful that actually reached their target passed through Stan rather than actually hitting him, but that didn't mean it wasn't annoying. After almost an hour of that silent stand-off, Stan had sighed and retreated upstairs. He wasn't wanted, that much was all too clear, and sticking around the lab and pestering Ford further wasn't accomplishing anything. Maybe if he just left Ford alone like he'd wanted, he'd come to his senses and actually hear Stan out when the morning rolled around, after he'd burned off some energy, maybe even gotten a few minutes of sleep in between work sessions.

Stan grumbled as he sat in the armchair in the living room- or tried to, anyway. What actually happened was that he ended up sitting about an inch into its cushion, then floating a similar distance above it when he tried to course-correct. Not that there was anything for him to do there, either. The main source of entertainment in the room, the television, was turned off. Stan reached for the remote, just on instinct, but his hand passed through it just like it passed through everything else. He'd only bought this TV a few weeks earlier after breaking the previous one- actually went out and _bought_ the thing rather than wait around for somebody to give one away or throw one out and snatch it up, though admittedly he'd grabbed the cheapest one he could find at a garage sale and haggled the owner into selling it for less than half their asking price- and now he couldn't even use it when he needed it most. It figured.

So what else did he have left?

He could go poke around town, he supposed, but he wasn't sure he was ready to see the damage that had resulted from the calamity. Things were bad enough inside, dealing with his own family's problems, he didn't need to start worrying about every last person in town, too- especially when there was that nagging little voice in his head that was suddenly producing brilliant ways of fixing the situation after the fact, hinting that he could have done better, _should_ have done better, that everything that had gone wrong could be traced back to him and his poor decisions...

So that left the kids. He might as well check up on them, he supposed, make sure that they were doing okay, that they'd actually gone to sleep like they were supposed to.

Stan floated up to the attic and unceremoniously entered the kids' room.

Dipper was still awake. Not a huge surprise, really; that kid had already proved over the course of the summer that he had inherited the Pines family insomniac streak (and there were other reasons, of course, that the boy might have chosen to forego sleep tonight, reasons that Stan forced into the back corners of his mind). Instead of surrounding himself with pillows and blankets, Dipper had gathered together a fort of books and papers arranged in a rough semi-circle in front of him. He flipped between pages frantically, occasionally scribbling down something onto a post-it note and smacking it onto one of the papers. The table next to him held three supply piles: one containing carefully-stacked blue and black pens, one containing unused yellow post-its, and one containing half a dozen pens that had been chewed until they were nearly unrecognizable, the remains of their ink still staining the boy's lips and tongue.

Mabel, however, was fast asleep, her arms tightly wrapped around a purple stuffed rhino. Waddles lay by her side, stillness and loud snoring indicating that he too was sleeping, though the pig's eyelids did flutter when a sudden shift in position led to Mabel jamming her elbow into Waddles' head. Mabel was tossing and turning a lot in her sleep, actually, unusual given that she was usually the only one around here who could actually manage to get a good night's sleep.

Stan drew closer, wishing that his presence would calm his great-niece but knowing that even if she were awake, she would remain oblivious. What was going on in that head of hers, anyway? He figured that usually the girl's dreams would be filled with bright pleasant things, all sparkles and sunshine and rainbows... but as he watched her bump her head against Waddles while shifting position once more, Stan had a feeling that tonight, her dreams were not so calm.

And as he listened more carefully, tuning out Dipper's page flipping and pen clicking and the pig's raucous snoring, he could hear the girl moaning in her sleep, guttural noises of distress interspersed with mumbled utterings of the word " _no_."

Stan reached out to gently pat the girl's head, though he knew damn well that it wouldn't do a lick of good, that his hand would just pass right through again- but he had to do _something_ , he couldn't just stand back and watch his great-niece suffer, he had to at least try...

He was right, of course. His hand didn't touch Mabel's head.

But it did land on the fuzzy head of a stuffed animal.

"What the..."

Stan blinked, taking in the scene before him anew. Where Mabel's head had been now stood a stuffed animal of indeterminate species, a hot pink creature with a bill and rounded ears and a tuft of hair on its head. And, as he looked around further, Stan saw that this was not the only change in scenery that had occurred while his attention was focused elsewhere. The attic and the kids were gone, replaced by plush dolls and tall trees with pale gray bark and puffy, colorful blobs in the place of leaves.

One blob fell off from the treetops, scraping against Stan's shoulder before resting in the palm of his hand, light and soft. When he touched it, the stuff gave way to even the gentlest of presses, imprints of his fingerprints still visible on its surface, while bits and pieces attached themselves to his fingers.

Stan lifted the blue, round glob up to his face and sniffed it, immediately wrinkling his nose at the sickeningly sweet stench. The smell was unmistakable, bringing back memories of all the old carnivals he'd attended, as a kid and as an employee and, hell, they'd even ran one this summer, though that seemed so long ago now...

Cotton candy. Somehow, these trees were growing cotton candy.

Stan absentmindedly dropped the glob of cotton candy to the ground as his thoughts wandered, trying and failing to come up with an explanation for the abrupt change in his surroundings. Trees that grew cotton candy weren't one of Gravity Falls' usual anomalies, even without getting into the whole business of him reaching where they were in the first place- but, hell, nothing else had been normal (or even normal by Gravity Falls standards, which was an altogether different beast) today, so sure, why not top it all off with a realm filled with cotton candy trees. At least the trees weren't attacking him or anything, though Stan did have the feeling that he was being watched, and not just by the big dopey eyes of the pink stuffed critter he'd inadvertently touched or the animal he saw out of the corner of his eye that looked like some freakish mix of a snake and a badger. He'd learned the hard way over the years to trust his instincts, and now would be no exception. The place might have appeared all but deserted, but despite appearances, Stan could sense that he was not alone.

And when he heard a familiar high-pitched cackle in the distance, Stan thought he had a good idea who it was that was watching over him.

Stan charged towards the sound of that unholy laugh, weaving his way through the trees and dodging bizarre creatures both stuffed and living, even though the thought of the encounter to come was enough to make his blood run cold (but he would still fight, oh would he fight, Stanley Pines was nothing if not a fighter)…

If Bill was somehow still up and kicking, well, he'd just have to finish the job he'd started a few hours back.

But as he drew nearer to the sound's source, Stan noticed something odd about the laugh. It had the same inflections every time, the exact same tone, over and over… it was on a loop. The damn demon's laugh was on a loop.

And that loop led him to the rift, the tear in dimensions that Bill had unleashed, and he could've sworn that they'd gotten rid of it but there it was, hanging in the sky just the same...

Except that the rift didn't look quite like it had before. Oh, the shape was right, the same big X hanging in a now-starry sky, but it looked as though all the color had been leeched out of it, the bright yellows replaced with whites and grays. And though Bill's voice, Bill's laugh, seemed to be echoing out from inside of it, the demon himself was nowhere to be seen.

On the ground beneath the rift was the portal, looking almost new despite it having been in ruins the last time he'd seen it, the inside circle filled with blue light. And next to it was a pedestal that held not a red button, but a red replica of the rift as it had looked while still trapped in glass, its contents swirling violently.

The stars shone pink and yellow, aside from a handful closest to the rip in reality that remained white, and the dark ground was sprinkled with glitter, and oh look there was another one of those snake-badger things running by, and Stan could _swear_ it was looking at him funny…

"What the he-"

And between the portal and the glass-enclosed rift was Mabel, wearing an indigo sweater that covered her hands down to her fingertips, and her big wide eyes were looking right at him.

"-heck is going on?"

Mabel's eyes lit up as they met his, and in that moment Stan could swear the stars lit up as well, their soft pastel light making the area warm and bright.

"Grunkle Stan?"

Stan chuckled gently, his laugh growing as Bill's faded away. "The one and only."

And suddenly Mabel was running towards him, _sprinting_ towards him, hands extended, and before he could react she rammed right into his chest, the sheer force of the impact making him fall to the ground. The ground was cool, pleasantly so, and when he made contact with it a puff of glitter flew into the air and tickled his nose, and even though none of it made a lick of sense it all felt so vivid, so _real_ , almost more so than the rest of the night had been.

As he sat up gingerly, Mabel pulled him into a tight hug, pressing her face against the shoulder of his suit. Stan reciprocated, cotton candy-encrusted fingers clutching the soft wool of her sweater.

"I... I was so worried... I thought you were..."

"I know."

Mabel nuzzled her head against Stan's shoulder once more, then looked up at his face, studying it for a moment before breaking the silence again. "Grunkle Stan, are you okay? Why are your eyes all wonky?"

"Oh yeah, that... listen, don't worry about that, sweetie. I'm sure it's nothing."

Mabel loosened her grip, leaning back a bit as the two remained eye to eye, her expression sinking into a slight frown. "...you aren't _Bill_ , are you?"

"NO!" The word came out louder than he intended, and as Mabel stood up, he took a deep breath before continuing, pulling himself off the ground and wiping off some of the glitter that had accumulated on his pants as he spoke. "No, I'm not Bill. Really. It's me, Mabel. It's your uncle."

They stood silently face to face for a good long minute, Mabel looking straight into his "wonky" eyes, searching them for something he couldn't quite name. Finally she nodded, her frown fading away, though the smile that emerged in its place was weak and thin.

Stan crouched down, kneeling as he reached out and rested his hand on Mabel's shoulder. "Look, I'll be honest with ya, kiddo, I don't really get what's going on here either. But what matters is that I'm here, and I'm okay, and... everything is going to be okay."

The words weren't perfect, he knew that. And he knew they wouldn't, couldn't, make everything better. But what he didn't expect was for Mabel's smile to disappear altogether, replaced by a thoughtful frown.

Her voice, when she spoke up again, was soft and weak.

"Am I dreaming?"

"What?"

"...none of this is real, is it?" Mabel's eyes turned towards the floor, the girl staring resolutely at her shoes as she spoke. "It's not really you here. This is all just a dream."

"What are you talking about?" Stan dropped his hand and looked up at the stars, twinkling in shades of pink and gold, and at the thankfully-silent gray rift in dimensions above, and the blood-red rift imprisoned in glass below. Okay, so the kid had a point, something was off about this place. But...

"This can't just be your dream, I'm here too!" Or... could ghosts enter dreams? He couldn't recall any references to that in Ford's notes, but in all fairness, he'd had other things on his mind when reading those over...

Mabel squatted to the ground, wrapping her hands around herself and burying her head in her blanket.

"Mabel, just talk to me."

The stars began to fade away, one by one, the far edges of the world retreating into a dull white mist.

Mabel's quiet murmur of a response could barely be heard through the thick fabric of her sweater.

"I don't want this to be a dream."

The mist was eating away at the rift in the sky now, and the cotton candy woods in the distance had all but vanished.

"I'm here, Mabel. I'm real. I can't speak for the rest of this place, but..."

The two of them stood together in a sea of white, and Stan reached out his hand to hold on to Mabel... and the world came rushing back.

He was back in the attic, right where he had been before, on the side of Mabel's bed. His hands were clean now, the cotton candy that had assaulted him before now gone, with only the memory of its sweet scent lingering in his nose. Dipper was still shuffling around old notes and clicking his pen incessantly. And Mabel's eyes were open now, though only just, as she leaned forward and squinted at her surroundings, looking as disoriented as Stan felt.

After her bleary-eyed survey of the room was completed, Mabel collapsed back onto the bed, letting out a soft groan.

Two voices spoke up at the same time in response to the noise-

"Oh hey, Mabel, you're still awake?"

"Don't worry, Mabel. I'm right here. Can you still hear me?"

-but Mabel only responded to one of the two, prefacing her response with another weak groan.

"Jus' had a weird dream, and... and Grunkle Stan was there..."

Grunkle Stan sighed, shaking his head solemnly.

Dipper dropped his papers and turned his head to face Mabel. "You wanna talk about it?"

Mabel hesitated, then shook her head, throwing several long strands of hair onto her face in the process. "Uh-uh."

"...alright. Just let me know if you want to talk, okay?"

"Mkay." Mabel turned her body to face away from Dipper and threw a pillow on top of her head, causing Waddles, who had been leaning against said pillow, to wake up and stare discontentedly at Mabel before snorting and closing his eyes again.

Dipper watched his sister for a minute more before turning back to his work, though he stopped clicking his pen, leaving the room more or less quiet as she settled in.

Stan floated over to the far wall and looked down at Mabel, whose eyes were fluttering fast, swift silent tears dripping their way down her face away from her brother's watchful eyes.

"Hey, Mabel, don't waste your tears on me, alright?"

Stan reached out to wipe away her tears, but once again his hands passed through her as easily as through thin air.


	6. Chapter 5

"Did you two sleep well last night?"

Ford's voice was calm and casual, but the way his gaze lingered on each kid's face as he waited for a response suggested that there was more to the question than met the eye.

The three were sitting around the hastily-cleared living room table, all of them nibbling away at bowls of dry cereal, as the milk in the fridge no longer resembled milk so much as cream.

Dipper shoved a huge spoonful of cereal in his mouth and made a show of chewing it slowly, giving a shrug as his only response. But the bags under the boy's eyes betrayed his lack of sleep, though Ford's eyes held bags twice as large.

"How about you, Mabel?"

Mabel gulped down the bite of cereal she'd been working on. "Not so great. I had a weird dream about Grunkle Stan, and after that I couldn't really sleep."

Ford's spoon slipped from his hands and clattered against the bowl.

Ford took a deep breath before speaking. "Oh? And what happened in this dream of yours?"

"...well, we hugged, and he told me everything would be okay, but then I realized it was all a dream and I woke up."

"Did he look... different at all? Something strange about his eyes, for instance?"

Dipper gently set his spoon in his bowl, his gaze darting from his sister's face to Ford's and back again as each spoke in turn.

"It _wasn't Bill_."

"That's not what I asked."

Mabel slouched down in her chair. "But it's what you _meant_."

Ford stayed silent for a minute, watching Mabel carefully. "You didn't answer the question."

Mabel sat back up and stared at her cereal, half-heartedly pushing it around her bowl with her spoon. "Yeah, his eyes were weird- but not like Bill eyes, just... dark. I dunno. Must be one of those weird dream things."

"...yes, I suppose so. Just one of those dream things."

Silence fell over the room, and one by one they each resumed eating. A few times, somebody paused and opened their mouth as if to speak up, but thought better of it and closed their mouth without saying a word.

Ford was the first to push away his bowl, though it was still half-full, and after picking away at another spoonful Dipper followed suit. Mabel took a minute longer, her bowl almost clean when she stopped.

Ford stood up. "I'm heading down to the basement- actually, I'll get something for you two to work on while I'm at it, alright?"

Two nods and one mumbled "sure" followed as a response.

"Good. I'll meet you back up here."

As Ford headed towards the vending machine and the door that it concealed, Stan edged away from where he had been hiding on the far side of the doorway and followed his brother.

"Hey poindexter, willing to hear me out yet?

Ford paused in front of the vending machine, glancing back at Stan before touching his watch to move the machine aside. "You _entered Mabel's dream_?"

Stan sighed. "Guessing that's a no."

Ford rushed down the hallway that opened at his command, his back facing Stan the whole way. "I should have known, really. Just because I knew better than to fall asleep when you're around doesn't mean the children-"

"Wait, are you saying you didn't get any sleep last night? At all?"

Ford jabbed at the elevator buttons with significantly more force than the maneuver required. "Of course not."

"'Of course'- you can't just _do_ that to yourself, Ford! Remember Ms. Pedrotti's Latin test? It's not worth it!"

The elevator doors opened, and Ford swung open the door that lay just beyond its boundaries, revealing a room Stan hadn't seen for years, maybe decades (not since half a dozen searches had confirmed that the second journal and the portal notes that it contained were nowhere to be found inside it). Ford's recent work there hadn't changed it greatly from what Stan remembered; there were lots of dusty books, several stacks of papers that looked as though they would fall over if you so much as sneezed on them... and an oversized white tarp draped over what Stan knew to be a number of large golden statues, icons of Bill, apparent friend turned to ultimate foe.

"It's worth it this time." Ford paused, glancing back at Stan. "Or maybe it isn't, given that you seem to pester me just as easily when I'm awake now."

"Yep, looks like I'm stuck haunting you for all eternity. Just what I've always dreamed of." Stan folded his arms against his chest and rolled his eyes as he spoke the final few words.

Ford wandered over to the nearest pile of papers, but didn't sit down in the adjacent chair. "Even corporeally... a side effect of opening the rift, I would assume, though it's only affected me thus far, aside from that little stunt with the salt shaker..." Ford pressed the palm of his hand against his forehead, resting his elbow on top of the pile of papers, and dug his fingers into his hair. "Though I doubt you'll be the one to shed light on that puzzle."

"I would if I could, but you're the one who usually figures this shit out, not me. Get together some fancy-shmancy experiment and do your thing, smart guy."

"I'm sure any experiment _you_ would agree to is one the rest of us would be better off without." Ford sighed as he hastily gathered together a handful of pens and two relatively clean notebooks, then placed them on top of one mound of paper and grabbed the lot, loose sheets fluttering to the ground as he struggled to hold the pile upright.

Scraps of dirty, crumpled paper fell with every step as Ford toddled to the elevator door and from there back to the Shack proper, the mound shifting with every footstep, Ford using his shoulders and chin as much as his hands and arms to keep the neck-high pile under control. Stan didn't even bother trying to pick up after Ford this time; he was beginning to accept that even picking up a stray post-it note was beyond him now.

At the end of the trek, Ford unceremoniously plopped the pile down onto the table where they had eaten breakfast, only afterwards noticing that the children had moved elsewhere, the remnants of their breakfast disappearing with them.

"Dipper? Mabel?"

The children gave no response, but upon listening closely, muddled voices could be heard coming from the kitchen.

Ford's footsteps as he made his way towards the source of the noise were small and cautious, and his eyes scanned the area repeatedly as he walked forward. Stan, less worried about the sound signifying the presence of some ferocious foe (even if danger did lurk around the corner, what more could it do to _him_?), floated hastily through the wall and into the room.

Dipper and Mabel were poised over the kitchen sink, one side of which was nearly overflowing with suds. Both children's hands were sopping wet, dripping water and bubbles onto the grimy floor, and Dipper had a mound of suds clinging to his shoulder while Mabel sported an impressive bubble beard.

They didn't notice as Stan entered the room, but as Ford stepped inside, the twins turned to face him, their wide smiles turning to sheepish grins.

"What's going on here?"

Dipper and Mabel exchanged a look.

"We... we washed the dishes for you, Great-Uncle Ford." Dipper pointed to a pile of dishes, the edge of a bowl and the handles of three spoons sticking out of the water's sudsy surface.

A wry smile crept its way onto Ford's face. "Thank you, children. Now, I brought some papers up that I'd like you two to look at." His gaze moved downwards, lingering on the children's wet hands. "You... may want to dry your hands first."

A few minutes later, the children, dry once more (though Mabel still had a few stubborn bubbles clinging to her chin and Dipper's vest remained damp around the shoulder), joined Ford over by the table as the floating Stan looked on.

"What _is_ all this?" Mabel gazed up at the top of the papers, which towered above the girl's head.

"These are my old research papers. I haven't had time to go through them properly since I got back, but now they may be all that stands between us and utter annihilation. I want you two to read through them and write down anything you see about demons or the rift- and if you find something that might help us take down Bill, come get me immediately. You know where to find me."

Dipper and Mabel nodded in unison, and the two shuffled around pens and papers as they prepared to go to work.

"Good." Ford nodded back at them. "I'm counting on you."

As Ford turned away, heading back towards the basement, Dipper replied, "We're on it, Great-Uncle Ford!" Mabel mimicked Dipper's statement, doing a poor imitation of her brother's overly-enthusiastic voice; Stan couldn't quite make out Dipper's retort, as he and Ford had already reached the vending machine by then and the walls were muffling the sound, but his great-nephew's tone of mixed indignation and amusement was clear enough.

As the two descended into the basement once more, Stan glared at his brother and asked, "What are you playing at, Sixer?"

"I don't know what you mean," Ford said, his voice even and calm as he unlocked the door, all the while refusing to meet Stan's gaze.

"Don't tell me you suddenly forgot everything about Bill and need the kids to put together the pieces- and without you in the room. There's something else going on here. I'm not an idiot, Stanford."

Ford snorted. "You're not an idiot, yet you apparently expect me to divulge my every thought."

"Yeah, yeah, you're so 'mysterious' and 'secretive' and all that- look, you're trying to bullshit a master bullshitter here, and whatever the hell it is you've been doing for the last thirty years, it doesn't seem to have made your piss-poor lying any better."

Ford sat down, practically slamming a nearby notebook onto the table, hunching over it as he scribbled frantically. "The children have work to do now, work just as important as my own-"

"Bullshit."

Ford continued on as though Stan hadn't spoken up. "-and given that our tasks don't directly intersect, it only makes sense that we work separately to avoid distracting one another-"

"Is that what they are to you? A distraction?"

Ford set down his pen and turned his head to look back at Stan. "What?"

"You don't want the kids around because they might be a distraction to that big old brain of yours, is that it? They're not on your level, so you'll just stick them somewhere out of the way while you do the real work?"

Ford sighed and pushed his chair to the side so that he could see Stan more easily, though his hand still rested atop his open notebook, one finger brushing against his pen. "That's not what I meant."

"Then what the hell did you mean? After all they've done with you over the past few weeks- all they've done _for_ you- you really think locking yourself away in a room is better than letting them actually help?"

Ford stood up and roughly shoved his chair aside, looking straight at Stan, who was floating a head's length above.

"Why do you care so much about what Dipper and Mabel are doing?"

"Why don't you?"

Ford sighed, running his hand briskly through his hair, silence lingering in the air for a long moment before he gave his reply. "...this mess is mine to deal with, not theirs."

"Well, you got one thing right there. None of this is their fault, and if you think it is, I-"

"Of course not! And even if it was, they're twelve, things happen, you can't really blame them..."

Stan was suddenly, viscerally reminded of how he'd seen life when he was twelve- how his mind had been filled not with demons or the end of the world, but with fantastic adventures that he had been sure awaited him ( _awaited them_ ) in the years to come. He could almost feel the splinters digging into his hands, the sun beating onto his skin until it was tender and red, the grains of sand clinging to the spaces between his toes...

But those days were long gone. That old boat he had ( _they had_ ) worked so hard on had probably rotted away by now, or been taken apart for scrap.

"What's the cut-off point, then?" Stan floated closer to Ford, who leaned backwards slightly but maintained eye contact. "Sixteen?"

"Wh..."

Some small part of Stan took delight in how his brother trailed off before finishing the word, in how Ford's gaze sank to the floor as he fell silent.

Ford didn't stay quiet for long, though, his voice bouncing back with renewed vigor as he pointed up at Stan. "I am not going to sit here and- and squirm for your amusement, Bill! I've already asked you nicely to leave-"

Stan snorted. "If you're talking about our little chat last night, I'd hardly call that 'asking nicely'."

"This is it, Cipher. If you stay here any longer, I will do everything in my power to obliterate you from existence."

"Gee, great offer there, but you know, I think I've had enough wandering the world for one lifetime." Stan wrinkled his nose. "Er, one existence? One somethin'."

Ford sighed, shaking his head grimly. "That's a no, then. You don't expect me to follow through with it, do you? But that's where you're wrong. I know how to stop you, Bill, and I won't hold back, no matter what face you're wearing."

Stan and Ford locked eyes, and Stan searched his brother's eyes for even the slightest hint of uncertainty or hesitation, but all he could see within them was fire and rage.

Stan wondered what Ford saw in his eyes.

Stan wondered if Ford saw anything at all besides the black and gold.


	7. Chapter 6

"Grunkle Ford, Grunkle Ford, look what we found!"

Ford let out a noise of surprise as he turned and threw the nearest of a sizable stack of crumpled-up wads of paper at the source of the words. The paper ball harmlessly bounced off an unbothered Mabel, who was excitedly waving a notebook page in the air, the wide grin on her face rivaled only by that of her brother.

Ford let out a sigh of relief as he pushed himself up from the desk, where he had been crouched over notes, head and arms encircling the papers. "I'm sorry, Mabel, you just... startled me."

"Pssh." Mabel used her free hand to make a gesture waving away Ford's concern. "Not a problem. But look, we found something in your notes that could help against Bill!" She waved the notebook page around even more enthusiastically, the paper curving and flapping in the air.

"Careful with that! Here, let me get a closer look."

"Oh. Right."

Ford stepped closer, and Mabel held out the page. It didn't look particularly remarkable at a glance, displaying nothing that looked particularly menacing or lethal, just a few small pictures and scribbled descriptions of several rather mundane-looking objects.

Ford examined the page closely, tracing the writing with his finger before eventually resting his thumb next to a picture of something that looked as much like a cheap gift shop knick-knack as a magical artifact worthy of serious study, muttering to himself all the while, before finally glancing back up at Dipper and Mabel. "Good find, you two."

"Dipper found it, actually." Mabel extended her arm towards her brother, who stood up straighter at the mention of his name.

"A-and I was thinking-" Dipper rummaged through his vest before retrieving a small notebook, which he flipped through frantically. "-if we combined that with-"

"Quiet now." Ford scanned the room, but overlooked Stan's hiding spot near the bottom of the tarp. (Stan always had been the better of the two at hide and seek.) "He's probably watching us as we speak. If we're going to plan anything, we need to do it as quietly and stealthily as possible, so that there's a chance he might not notice."

And so Ford and the kids gathered together supplies and huddled around a piece of... was that _parchment_? Of all the things Ford could have around as writing material, he was using _parchment_? At least that's what it looked like, a giant piece of off-white paper, nothing like the stuff you'd buy at the store...

The three sketched and wrote frantically on the paper, but the way they all leaned over it made it damn near impossible for Stan to get a glimpse at their plans, even when he eventually inched away from the tarp and closer to their work. They worked for minutes, maybe hours, it was hard to tell, but eventually the three split up and started working on separate projects, ones that still didn't make much sense as Stan watched them being made piece by piece. But one pattern emerged from their work.

Apparently, to defeat a demon triangle, you needed... circles. Lots and lots of circles.

The circle that Mabel was working on was composed of wood, thin pine boughs twisted and bent until they joined together to make a circle as wide as Mabel was tall, a fact repeatedly demonstrated by her laying down in the middle while doing her work (and when she occasionally flopped down on top of the circle when she had had enough and needed a break). Across the circle, she made intricate loops and patterns with off-white string, geometric shapes arranged just so, with all the lines eventually criss-crossing around the circle's center. On roughly a quarter of the circle she hung neon-colored strings and lined them with thick beads and brightly-dyed feathers.

It was, admittedly, a magnificent crafts project, but its connection to the situation at hand was utterly lost on Stan.

Dipper's project was a bit more straightforward. He made a circle out of rainbow hair, unicorn hair, and Stan had seen a similar lining just outside the Shack, could guess its intended purpose. There was more to the circle than the hair, too- stones dotted its perimeter at regular locations, and all around the edge had been sprinkled drops of mercury, the silver beads gleaming as they were carefully nudged into place. The space that this barrier encompassed was a bit smaller than that of Mabel's wooden circle; within it lay a large stack of books, the memory gun that Ford had used to get rid of the feds, and, for some reason, a spray bottle full of unidentified clear liquid. (Stan would have liked to assume that the liquid was water. Stan knew better.)

Ford used thick white chalk to outline circles within circles within circles, the outermost one significantly dwarfing the other two projects. (Only one room in the house had enough open space for such a project, and upon poking his head into the basement, Stan had found its floor conveniently vacant; he hadn't seen the cleaning happen, but the dust of the basement floor matched the dust on Ford's clothes, and his boots sported a thick layer of mud that hadn't been there the night before, and he could put together the rest.) Along the chalk lines he added a number of candles- not the ugly squat things Stan kept around in case of a power outage or the thin, colorful ones which had been sitting in a half-empty box in the far reaches of the freezer for decades on end, but long, white, tapered candles, probably meant for some formal occasion, doubtlessly expensive. In between the circles-in-circles Ford wrote symbols, some arcane and some prosaic, some that Stan dimly remembered from old portal-fixing research (was that one from a _star chart_?) and some that he came across on a daily basis (that tree symbol looked just like the one on that hat Dipper always wore, and he'd seen that shooting star on one of Mabel's sweaters, and the six-fingered hand... was obvious enough as well).

The work on all three soon turned into mere tweaking, into brushing away lines and replacing them with nearly-identical counterparts, into scraping stones against wood while adjusting their placement slight fractions of an inch, into breaking out a tool Stan dimly remembered from math class to make sure that the string patterns were aligned just so. Stan didn't know where to look, or what to look for. He suspected that that was rather the point.

Ford came up to check on the kids and their work every so often.

He did not, Stan noted, invite them to do the same.

The last of his check-ups came hours after the summer sun had set, and while in the others Ford had ended his examinations with long lists of things that needed to be edited or redone, this time he offered only a few minor additions, the critique far outweighed by praise. The three stood together inside the unicorn hair circle as Ford rambled on about something to do with the special properties of mercury on wood.

Stan was on the outside of the circle; he couldn't join them if he tried (and he had tried, had tried several times now, growing bolder as the hours fled by and little seemed to change). Sure, the barrier was made with sparkly hair and gemstones, and the others had no trouble scampering through what looked to the world like thin air, but for Stan it might as well have been a metal wall- it was hard and smooth and cold and even if he charged at it with all his might, Stan wasn't so sure it'd be the one to budge.

Stan leaned back against the barrier, which came into view as he made contact, emitting a purple-tinged glow riddled with strange sigils.

"Neat trick there, I'll give you that one."

Ford didn't pause his nerd rant for even a moment to show that he'd heard.

"If I knew how to make these work for, er, normal people, the Mystery Shack would have its newest attraction ready to go!"

That one merited a pause, a pause followed by Ford spitting out words rapid-fire as if to make up for lost time.

Stan could practically feel Ford's gaze burning into the back of his head.

He didn't turn around.

"I can see it now..." Stan held up his hands as if framing a sign. "'The Invisi-Maze: More fun than the eye can handle!' Or somethin' like that, anyway..."

Stan's arms fell back as he finished gesturing, and he kept slipping as he tried to reposition himself against the awkwardly-curved barrier, eventually taking a step back altogether. He glanced briefly at the colorful barrier before it rippled back into invisibility, revealing a brother who was indeed giving him a vicious glare.

"Probably, uh, hafta get that glow thing in check first. But forget the hall of mirrors, any two-bit hole in the wall can throw together one of those, but an actual invisible maze, hell, what tourist wouldn't pay out the nose for something like that..."

"This is more than mere fodder for some cheap tourist attraction, Sta-"

All eyes fell on Ford as he halted his speech in the middle of the word. He rubbed one hand against his temple, breaths deep and quick as he paused before speaking up again, voice rushed and with a hint of a tremor.

"Bill, you're Bill, I _know_ you're Bill-"

"Grunkle Ford, what's going on?"

"What's he doing? Is there something we can do to help?"

Dipper grabbed Ford's loose hand, and as Ford let his other hand drop back to his side Mabel latched onto it in turn. Ford's breathing slowed as he squeezed the twins' hands, though there was still a slight weakness in his voice as he responded.

"...Never mind that. More importantly, I believe I've been lecturing you two for far too long." He let out a noise that was clearly intended as some manner of laugh, but fell far short of the mark. "What matters is that you've both done a fine job, and both of these should do quite well to help us defeat Bill."

Ford shot Stan a quick glare. Stan shot one right back.

"In fact, take the rest of the night off. We can do any minor tweaks in the morning, but I wouldn't worry too much about that."

"And what about you?"

"I'll be tending to my own project down in the basement. I'll see you again come morning."

"Can we help?"

"No!"

A moment of silence fell upon the room before Ford attempted to soften his reply.

"It's very- very delicate and complicated work, you see, and you two could use the rest anyway-"

"Sure, _they're_ the ones who need rest." Stan mumbled.

If Ford heard Stan's words, he didn't show it.

"-so I'm sorry, but you can't join me down there, you really can't. Just- don't go in the basement, no matter what, unless your life is in danger."

"But Grunkle Ford-"

"No buts. _I_ will come to see _you_ in the morning. Until then, just- stay safe, stay up here, and if anything happens, if he..." Ford sighed and squeezed the twins' hands tightly. "Just _be careful_. Promise me that."

Dipper and Mabel looked up at their great-uncle's deep eyes before nodding.

"We promise."

"Don't worry about us, Grunkle Ford- we're just worried about _you_!"

"Don't be." Ford shook his head and let out another not-quite-laugh. "I'll be fine. It will all be fine come morning. Now-" Ford released his hands from the children's grip. "I'm going to go work. Nobody follow me."

Ford rushed towards the basement entrance, leaving a confused Dipper and Mabel in his wake. Stan, after a brief moment of consideration, followed behind.

Ford worked at a frantic pace, sketching designs that were more and more intricate until Stan could barely make out the individual lines, measuring and re-measuring the circles and the candle placements, consuming prodigious amounts of coffee but no actual sustenance. Stan hung back for the most part, though he didn't bother hiding from Ford's view anymore; he made a few passing remarks, attempts to rekindle a conversation, but his words faded and died in the basement's cold, stale air.

Stan kept his distance as Ford began to light the long, thin candles one by one, going from the outside inward; Stan hung back as Ford reached the center of the innermost circle and got out a fancy-looking knife, its hilt shimmering in the candlelight. Only as Ford pressed the knife into the palm of his hand and beads of crimson blood dripped onto the floor did Stan rush forward, suddenly keenly aware of every microscopic nerve and blood vessel that Ford might have just cut into, all the irreversible damage that might be caused by a single poorly-placed cut.

"Goddammit, Ford, be careful!"

But Ford was faster than him, it seemed, for by the time Stan reached the center Ford was already on the far side of the farthest circle, chanting some gobbledygook that might have been Latin. (Stan suddenly regretted all the times he had nodded off during Latin class.) Ford's voice reached a crescendo, a wave of warmth passed over Stan...

And then, to Stan's shock, Ford actually responded to him.

"Since when do you swear?"

"Since, uh, sixth grade? Seventh?" Stan shrugged. "You probably remember better than I do, I wasn't exactly subtle-"

"That's not what I meant."

There was a sound Stan couldn't quite place, something soft against stone.

"What was that?"

"I'm not getting distracted that easily."

"No, seriously, what was that?" Stan looked to the source of the sound and saw nothing but a few clumps of dirt and pebbles- though he was pretty sure those hadn't been there before. "Is this place caving in or something? Because that's the sort of thing I'd like to know about sooner rather than later, ghost or no."

"Wh- Look. We can solve this once and for all now. If you really are Stan's ghost, just leave the circle. A ghost would have no trouble with these wards."

"Seriously? That's it?" Stan started floating towards Ford, whose expression was nearly indecipherable. "After all that, I just-"

Stan didn't mean to scream.

Honestly, he didn't. But it was only natural that he let out a yelp when he touched that first chalk line and slammed into what felt like a concrete wall and an electric fence put together. There was still no sign to the bare eye that anything was there, no glimmering wall to mark the barrier that was clearly there for him, just a point at which thin air turned into wall and pain.

"I knew it." There was a cold fury in Ford's voice, but also a strange melancholy. "This circle was made specifically to contain a demon, to contain _you_. Which it's doing quite well, I might add."

Stan tried to push through, to break whatever barrier those chalk lines had built up, but though he put all his force into it, the only sign that he was doing anything was a few measly sparks and an ever-increasing amount of pain.

Finally Stan fell back, retreating into the circle's center, not sure that he was ready to concede defeat just yet but willing to at least give himself a little time to recover.

"If- if this thing only works against demons, then..." Stan put together the pieces quickly enough, though he didn't much like the picture they painted. "Wait, humans can become demons? Does that mean Bill was-"

"No. Humans are humans, demons are demons, and that's that."

"Well, the world kind of went topsy-turvy yesterday, clearly a few things must have gone by the wayside..."

"Ah yes, thank you for reminding me of that." Ford reached into his jacket and pulled out a box nearly as long as he was tall, setting it on the floor- there was a yellow label on the box, and Stan could just barely make out the word _Experiment_ , followed by a three-digit number. "I'm going to make sure you never pull a stunt like that again."

What Ford grabbed when he opened the box turned out to be a gun- a huge, sci-fi-looking gun, and Ford probably would've used fancier words to describe it, but Stan knew a gun when he saw one. It wasn't the first time he'd found himself on the wrong end of one, either, but as Ford's aim grew more precise, Stan was beginning to suspect that it would be the last.

"Your reign of terror ends here, Bill."

"No, wait-" Stan flew upwards as fast as he could, but well before he could reach the ceiling one of those invisible barriers jolted him, sending him reeling back towards the floor. "-c'mon, Ford, don't do this to me, please-" He tried to swerve, to maneuver around as much as he could to avoid whatever that sci-fi gun had in store for him, but there just wasn't enough room, and the muzzle was glowing blue and Stan didn't know exactly what that meant but he was pretty sure it wasn't good news for him...

For one brief moment, Stan and Ford looked each other in the eye, and Stan silently pleaded to his brother to think twice, tried to save himself without words at a time when words failed him-

-but Ford closed his eyes as his finger twitched against the trigger.

 _THUMP!_

Ford's aim went awry as the sudden noise distracted him, and the shot landed not on Stan's head or torso but on his left pinky finger, a grazing shot that nonetheless hurt like hell. What the shot had touched, it had obliterated, leaving Stan with only four fingers remaining on his hand- until, as he watched, bone and muscle and skin appeared out of thin air and stitched itself back together, and after a few long, painful seconds his pinky was back, with no sign left to show that it had ever vanished in the first place.

Ford was watching Stan too, a somber look upon his face as Stan's finger rebuilt itself, so neither of the two had actually looked over at the source of the sudden sound until-

"Grunkle Ford, what are you _doing_?"

Both Stan and Ford spun around to find that where there had been nothing but a few rocks, there now stood both Dipper and Mabel, the two wide-eyed and covered in dirt.

"What are _you_ doing?" Ford retorted. "I told you two to stay upstairs!"

"Yeah... about that..." Dipper scratched the back of his head nervously, while Mabel shot Ford a sheepish smile.

"You were acting... kinda suspicious. So I may have- sort of- followed you down here to see what was going on. And once I saw Grunkle Stan I went and got Dipper and-"

"How? I would have heard you using the elevator..."

Before Ford could finish his sentence, Mabel brought out her tool of choice and pointed it triumphantly in the air. "Grappling hook!"

"Wait, wait, wait..." Stan jumped in, and all eyes turned to face him. "You can see me?"

Dipper and Mabel both nodded and made noises of agreement, their wide eyes growing even wider.

Ford impatiently tapped his foot against the ground. "Of course they can see you, it's a summoning circle, the whole point is that you're physical until the summons ends-"

"Holy shit, you can- er- don't tell your parents I said shit, okay?" After a moment's thought, Stan added, "Actually, don't tell your parents about any of this. That seems like a bad idea all around."

"Was this your plan all along, Bill, to drag them into this?"

"Was your plan all along just to shoot me?" Ford stayed silent in the face of this accusation, and Stan, all too aware that Ford's gun was still aimed in his general direction, pressed on. "All those fancy circles and lines and- it was all just a distraction, wasn't it?" Stan pinched the bridge of his nose. "I should have known- a classic shell game right there."

Mabel wrinkled her nose and tilted her head to one side. "A what now?"

"A shell game- you know-" Stan's hands flailed around in a series of awkward gestures as he attempted an explanation. "-you get three cups and put a ball under one, and move the cups around a bunch and get people to bet on which cup the ball is under, and by the time those rich guys realize you're palming the ball halfway through you're walking away a couple hundred dollars richer." Stan coughed and scratched the back of his neck nervously in the silence that followed. "Uh, not that I've done it myself. And you shouldn't either, it's a bad idea. Especially once the cops get involved."

Ford adjusted his glasses before speaking up. "That... is a surprisingly apt metaphor."

"Was that a compliment? That sounded suspiciously like a compliment."

"No, absolutely not."

"Grunkle Ford..." Mabel's speech was hesitant as she looked from one grunkle to the other. "...were you really going to shoot Grunkle Stan?"

Ford let out a long sigh before responding, resting one hand on Mabel's shoulder in a gesture of solace. "I'm sorry, Mabel, but that?" Ford pointed to Stan. "That's Bill. He's been taking that form this whole time. That is not your uncle."

"You mean…" Mabel looked at Stan with eyes full of sorrow. "I-in my dream… that was you, wasn't it?."

Stan let out a long sigh before he could reply, grasping desperately for the right words, but all that came to him was a simple "I'm sorry, Mabel."

"Don't…" Mabel started, but the sentence trailed off without an end. Evidently Stan wasn't the only one desperately scrambling for words.

"But we've got him now. Bill's trapped in that circle, and one good shot from this-" Ford gestured awkwardly in Stan's direction with his gun. "-will be enough to get rid of him for good."

Ford started aiming, but his arm was shaking and his fingers trembling and Dipper and Mabel were in front of him now, off to the side but only just- too close, much too close for comfort-

"Dipper, Mabel, for Pete's sake _get out of the way_!"

Stan hadn't meant for the words to be more than a mere whisper, hadn't really expected the kids to heed his warning, but the words echoed through the stone chamber all the same, and all eyes turned to him.

Mabel looked at Ford, then at Stan, before taking a step forward. "No."

" _What_?" Stan and Ford asked in near-unison.

"I said, no! I won't get out of the way!" Mabel walked- no, _ran_ towards the circle, passing through its chalk lines with ease before standing directly in front of Stan, her arms waving wildly in the air. "If you're gonna shoot Grunkle Stan, you're gonna have to go through me!"

Ford lowered his gun, though his grip on it remained tight.

"A-and me!" Dipper didn't move quite as fast as Mabel had, and his eyes stayed glued to the ground until after he had navigated the last of the chalk lines, but when he turned to face Ford, his gaze was just as fierce as his sister's. "You'll have to go through me first."

"Don't you see what he's doing?" Ford's voice was hoarse and anguished. "Bill knows you care about Stan, he's- he's using that against us, using that to-"

"No. No, no, no, no, no."

Dipper and Mabel looked up at Stan as he spoke, and Stan took that opportunity to grab them both, holding them at arm's length away from him. They felt light as a feather, their weight barely even registering to him, and though they squirmed and struggled it was a cinch to keep them more or less in place.

"Neither of you pipsqueaks are dying on my account, got it?"

The only response Stan got was a few noises of protest and one solid bite to the arm, but then, he hadn't been expecting much else.

"You want to kill me, Ford? Well, here's your chance. Got a nice, clean shot for you here. No shields, no distractions, no nothin'. Just get it over with so you and the kids can go about your lives already." After a moment's pause, Stan added, "And for God's sake, don't close your eyes when you shoot this time."

Stan locked eyes with his brother; Ford was doing an admirable job of keeping a neutral expression. For a moment, Stan thought he saw the gun moving out of the corner of his eye, thought he saw it rising up to point his way once more-

 _Clang!_

The gun hit the ground near Ford's feet, and Ford's now-empty hands were shaking.

"I... I've been an idiot, haven't I, Stanley?"

"Yup." Stan loosened his grip on Dipper and Mabel, and as the two stood by his side, Stan couldn't help but break out into a grin. "And here I thought you were supposed to be the smart one."

Ford smiled back at Stan, and the sight made his heart soar. "Evidently not."

"I think this calls for a GROUP HUG!"

Stan winced a little as Mabel shrieked into his ear; she may have felt light in his hands, but her voice was clearly as loud as ever. "Mabel, I don't think F-"

"Well, if you insist..."

Ford walked towards Stan, his steps slow and deliberate as he stepped between the chalk lines. Dipper and Mabel grabbed onto Stan and embraced him tightly, and once Ford entered the center circle they embraced him as well. Stan was slow to embrace them back, half-expecting that his arm would pass through them as it had before, but no, they were there and they were real and he could feel their warmth as they clung to him and if he were still human Stan might have been concerned that Mabel's tight grip was going to cut off his circulation, but that was one small upside of the situation, that he wouldn't have to worry about that anymore...

Stan wasn't sure when, exactly, Ford joined the hug, but soon enough Stan realized that the kids alone couldn't account for all the limbs latching onto him, and once he focused on it he could tell that yes, there was definitely a six-fingered hand patting him on the back. For one shining moment they were all there, all together, all hugging, and Stan knew deep down that despite all the shit he'd gone through, things were going to be okay, at least more or less.

Then Mabel lifted her hands into the air and screamed "GROUP HUG!" again and the group broke apart a little bit, though they were still close, still nearly touching as they faced one another in the circle.

Stan was the first to speak up after that.

"So, uh, Ford, you said something earlier about this circle making me physical, right? How's all that work?"

Ford nodded and took a breath before replying. "It's a summoning circle, it binds demons- which, in this case means you I suppose- I, I still don't know how that works-" Stan was pretty sure that even if he hadn't been looking right at Ford, he still would have felt the force of his brother's wide-eyed gaze as he hesitated for a moment and looked him at him up and down before continuing. (Stan glanced downward for a brief moment and realized that his feet still weren't quite touching the floor.) "-anyway, it binds demons to the physical plane temporarily, until one of two things happens: either we make a deal-"

"Not happening." Stan interjected.

"Or... or the summons runs out of time."

"And then these numbskulls-" Stan wrapped one arm around Dipper and the other around Mabel. "-won't be able to see me anymore?"

"Not unless we perform another summoning, no."

"Alright. So." Stan's grasp on Dipper and Mabel grew slightly tighter. "You're the brainiac here, Ford, so tell me. How long have we got?"


End file.
